Setting up Sun Ray Thin Clients from 2006 

Awesome! Yeah upon reflection I may have been too harsh on the performance review, I have to remember these are almost 20 years old (and the V120 is OVER 20 years old). I didn't do any type of perf analysis to see where exactly it was slowing down, though I suspect it's the V120. Will definitely follow up with more videos on these!

@@clabretro Could be worse. The V100 had IDE drives and another really slow box was the Netra T105. I ran my first Asterisk server on a T105 but it was really too slow for the job. The V240 should do much better and can incidentally do 16gb ram max.

I had an E450! Sadly, the interior foam disintegrated...

glad to hear that!

You would be surprised that many of those late 2000's Wyze thin clients are still being used in places in 2023. They are very long in the tooth and will grind to a halt if any animations or video is played.....😬

Thanks! Yeah... there is a surprisingly small amount of videos on Sun considering how ubiquitous they were for so many years.

@@clabretro I guess you couldn’t game on them, the RU-vid tech community didn’t give af about them.

Thanks, and you should! There are actually Sun/Oracle docs on how to run the server software on Linux boxes too, but that wouldn't have been as interesting haha.

😂 got one of the top 10 Sun Ray installations right in my basement.

Very nice! I've been thinking about tape backups for my rack as well. I picked up a pack of new old stock LTO 2 tapes for an old IBM drive I picked up recently, but just to mess around with. I'll probably do a whole video on that.

This setup definitely needs a J4400 to store all the sessions' files :D

Haha I know. Still looking at quotes 😬

Nice! I'll check out Smartcard Focus.

let me know how it goes!

Nice! Yeah I've always found thin clients interesting. They are obviously modeled back on the mainframe + terminal approach, but network bandwidth wasn't realistic enough for full graphics until the mid 2000s. It's also basically the same premise as a web app today, I suppose.

Interesting! I recently picked up one of the Sun Rays integrated into a monitor (a Sun Ray 270). I'll have more Sun Ray videos coming eventually.

@@clabretro I think the old stuff was some kind of x-term that wasn't sun ray. The new one looked like the Sun Ray 1 / 1G. I don't know what model based on visual.

Oh awesome! And thanks for watching.

Nice! I'm waiting on some parts before I can fire up my v240... would've preferred to use it for this actually.

Let me know if you end up getting smart cards working 😄

That's awesome! Those Sun Enterprise boxes are monsters... would love to have one someday, but definitely wouldn't leave it running haha.

@@clabretro I know it's fun to resurrect these old Sun boxes but can you run the Solaris OS and Sun Ray software in a VM and throw a bunch of resources at it?

Oh yeah you definitely could, I've actually successfully setup Solaris 10 VMs in my Proxmox server, I use them to JumpStart and netboot the physical Sun Fires. There is also a Linux version of the Sun Ray Server software too. After I experiment with the X2200 I might setup the server on a VM just to see what the difference is.

Absolutely, I didn't even try to get them to connect up with Windows. Definitely more videos coming on these!

@@clabretro My Sun Ray 2 arrived today. Literally a sealed box, never opened and came with a genuine sun card... sadly my X2100 is kernel panicing when I try to boot Sol 10 so need to look for another solution there.

@@andrewnoonan5786 Fantastic! (about the Sun Ray). Bummer on the X2100... hopefully you can get it sorted 🤞let me know if I can help!

@@clabretro I have ordered an X2100 M2 to replace it. Was considering an X4100 M2 but that chews 180 watts just for the cpu's.

My X2100 M2 arrived today. Came with 2gb ram , added another 2gb from spares. Net booting right now from a vmware sol 10 vm. Could not get Solaris working on Proxmox... As I type the install is at 84% so nearly there. :)

You need the sun ray server software, but there is a Linux version. So theoretically you could run it on a Linux machine, but I haven't tried it. I'd be interested! You can reach out to the email in the channel's about page (might need to be on desktop to see it).

Ha I was so excited it was working I didn't even think to try other software... I'm gonna throw Navigator on it.

They do indeed. At least IBM has done more for the industry as a whole :D

@@clabretro You're right. IBM has done SIGNIFICANTLY more than Oracle, but what happened a few days ago will probably be more memorable. This change disrupts a certain kind of long-standing "status quo". I wonder what the most popular RHEL clones like AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux will do in a few months or more as a response to this situation.

I really appreciate that, I hopefully have some Sun-branded cards on the way but if that falls through I'll respond back here to take you up on that offer! In my V120 and X2200 videos I briefly go over how I net booted those machines with a Solaris VM running in Proxmox (I'm sure you could get one running on a local hypervisor or something instead of dealing with Proxmox), which might be useful for getting those machines set up: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pXuqASXGvgM.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9APesxcbtPc.html If you end up trying it and have any issues let me know and hopefully I can help.

@@clabretro Sounds good. The cards I have most likely were used on Sunray 2FS and Sunray1G which are what I have.

I was thinking that could be an option, but unfortunately I don't have a programmer or reader outside of the Sun Rays themselves. I'll probably get around to buying one eventually and try that out.

Yeah I need to do some more research and try to hunt down a card that matches the supported list from the server software... wish I had known about that list ahead of time.

@@clabretro I’m fairly certain that you have the right cards, they may just be blank and need to be programmed. Try a stick your credit/debt card in one of the ThinClients and see if anything is detected and or happens, if so, then those cards might just be blank. Good luck non the less, and looking forward to seeing a video with smart cards!

I suspect that they may meet the spec but they probably need something written to the actual card to make it a Java card?

that's my current theory as well@@alexdhall

I'm pretty sure that's what it was, it was complaining about one file with a particularly long path. Just running unzip directly on the Sun Fire solved the problem.

Oh that's a good guess, I like that. I'll have to dig around in some of these server software bash scripts to see if they drop any hints, but I bet you're right. And yeah I believe newt was the code name for the Sun Ray line.

I think so since there is a Linux version. I've been meaning to try it, but I've got a long list of projects haha.

It'd be tricky... all they know how to do is ask the network for a Sun Ray server, no x86-style BIOS or anything.

i have faith i n you ... curiosity is good thing to tinker with @@clabretro

Haha I shouldn't complain. I actually cut several seconds out of the login sequences except that speedy one at the end, it was too excruciating to watch. But I shouldn't forget... took a solid minute to boot a Vista machine a couple years after these Sun Ray 2s came out, so everything in context I suppose.